Cabinet Picts - Part 1

I've made a lot of progress on the cabinet and took a lot of picts.  At this point all of the cabinet pieces have been cut out, the dadoes and grooves have been made, nothing is glued together and there's still a lot trimming to do.  So rather than write a full blog post I'm just going to post a bunch of picts with some captions:

Bottom with dadoes

Top with dadoes

Fitting the bottom and sides together.  The two backs will slide into these slots.

Close up of the fit, things are lining up nicely.

Bottom, sides and back put together to check fitting

Added top and middle shelf, still needs a little trimming but fits together pretty well

Preparing to cut a deep groove in the 1x3 that will be the top piece of the removable back

Two hours later, finished.

The endless groove, kinda reminds me of a scene from the Labyrinth

The removable back fit together with the top piece

So far I'm really happy with how everything is turning out.  The cool thing about all these dadoes is that I could assemble the thing without actually gluing it together or using any clamps to see how it fits.  I still have a ton of little stuff to do that will probably take a ridiculous amount of time but oh well, that seems to be the story so far.  I'll post a second set of pictures after all that little stuff is done.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Finally Starting to Build

It was tough to actually commit to cutting the real wood but this past weekend I finally decided to start building the cabinet.  Right now I'm just concentrating on making the cabinet itself and will hold off on the doors and drawer until that's mostly constructed.  So far there's not a whole lot to show.  I'm currently working on cutting out each piece which is taking some time.  In order to be as accurate as possible I'm cutting each piece slightly larger with the circular saw then trimming it down to the proper dimensions with the router.  The flush trim bit is coming in very handy for this, especially when I have to make multiple pieces exactly the same (sides, shelves, etc.).  Here's a few picts of the progress:

Cabinet pieces laid out in 4'x8' groups 

I laid out all of the pieces in SketchUp in groups of 4x8 sections to plan out how to cut each piece.  I ending up buying two sheets of 3/4" plywood and one sheet of 1/4" plywood for the back.  If all goes well that should be more than enough.

Raw materials

Using the router to trim the edges

Trimmed pieces so far:  Top, bottom, sides and middle shelf 

So I'm making progress slowly but surely.  I will post again once I have more interesting pictures.

Edge Banding and Dowel Joints

So I've been slacking a bit on posting my progress.  I've actually started to build the cabinet but I will talk more about that in the next post.  First, some back fill.  In my previous post the last thing I mentioned I wanted to test was edge banding.  Edge banding is this pretty nifty stuff that's used to cover the edges of plywood so it looks like solid wood.  I'm using the kind that you iron on.  There's glue on the reverse side, the iron heats the glue which bonds to the plywood.  Edge banding is slightly wider that the plywood so you can trim it perfectly flush with the wood using an edge trimmer or a router with a flush trim bit.  I used a scrap piece of wood left over from my joint testing for my first practice test.  Here's some picts:

Ironed but not yet trimmed

After trimming

Trimmed flush with the surface

I was amazed at how easy it was to apply the edge banding and to get a nice looking result.  The router made it very easy to trim the banding perfectly.  This led me to make another design change.

Originally, I had wanted the top edges of the cabinet to by mitered in order to hide the plywood edge.  I tried a few times to make a successful lock miter joint but it was too hard to be consistent.  So, with the success of the edge banding, I decided to change the top joints to dowel joints and cover the exposed edges with edge banding.  I tried it out and I think I'm pretty happy with the results:

Plywood joined with a dowel joint, edges covered with edge banding

Next post will have some picts from me finally starting to build the cabinet.  Stay tuned...

Venting Jig Test

After thinking more about how I would create the vents in the sides of the cabinet I came up with an idea for a jig that might make it easier.

Venting Jig Design

The idea was to have the project piece sit between two boards with several evenly-spaced slots and a cross member that fits into each set of slots.  The left and right sides can then act as stopping points and the top as a guide for the router.  After completing one vent the cross member is moved down to the next set of slots to line up the guide for the next vent.  Also the jig keeps the project piece elevated to be able to route straight through the piece without digging into the table underneath.

It took me a few days to actually build the jig.  Here's some picts of the finished jig and my practice piece.

Finished sides of the jig (made from MDF)

Getting ready to make the first cut

Three cuts in

The vents from the back side

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  As you can see from the pictures the cuts still need to be cleaned up a bit with a file but that's no big deal.  It took four passes with the router to complete one vent so it'll still take a lot of patience but the jig was very sturdy and very easy to work with.  Unfortunately I broke two tabs on one of the sides of the jig when I was building it--if you look closely you can see them in some of the picts--so it's not perfect but it still should be pretty usable.  


Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be testing some edge banding, another thing I've never used before.

Venting and Wire Management

I decided to take a break from the joining and focus on two other areas of the design:  venting and wire management.

The electronics can be sensitive to heat, particularly the game consoles.  I wanted to be able to have things running but still keep the doors closed so I figured I should probably design in some venting.  Here's what I came up with:

1/4" vents in sides of cabinet

These are 1/4" slots spaced every inch.  I'm hoping this, in addition to vents out the back, will provide adequate air flow.  This looks good in the design but I'm still not sure if it's really feasible.  It's not going to be easy.  I learned from the joint tests that I won't be able to cut through 3/4" of wood in a single pass.  Which means making multiple passes (probably three) per slot and making 15 slots that all need to start and end the same distance from the edge and all be parallel to each other.  All without the router slipping at all.  So I'm trying to come up with some sort of jig to help keep the router lined up and reduce the chance of it wandering off course.

Moving on to wire management.  No matter how many times I try to organize the wires behind my existing TV stand it always ends up looking like a rats nest.  So with this cabinet I wanted to build in a system that would help keep the wires clean and organized and, most importantly, hidden.  I was racking my brain on how exactly to do this.  My first thought was a series of holes in the walls and shelves to run the wires through but I couldn't come up with a way to ensure that they would be hidden.  My second idea, I think, has more promise:

Two Backs!

By having a false back wall I can run the wires out and around the cabinet but still hide them.  The outer back wall will be removable and, in theory, slide into grooves in the sides and bottom and remain flush with the top.  The false back also gives me a surface to attach clips or eye screws to help keep the wires organized.  I still need to work out the location of the holes in both back walls.  Like I said earlier I think I want some venting in the back as well and that would, obviously, have to be through both walls.

That pretty much covers the major design features I think.  As always suggestions are welcome.  Thanks for reading.

Testing Joints - Results

Phew... well... that was rough.  I definitely need more practice using the routing table.  Here are the results:

Everything started off good.  First, the dado--pretty straight forward.  It did make a nice smooth cut.  As an added bonus, because the plywood is slightly less than 3/4" thick, it fits perfectly in the dado without having to make it wider.

Getting ready to make the dado

Finished

Plywood fits perfectly

Onto the cabinet door joints.  I used two pieces left over from my tests with stain/dye.  First, I beveled the would-be inner edges:

Beveled Edge

Next, I made the center groove and that's when everything started to go poorly.

Not pretty.

This groove should be nice and clean.  It's also about twice as deep as it should be.  The router bit actually started to pull itself out of the router.  Thankfully, it didn't come all the way out and nothing else happened.  I had the speed set too low and was probably trying to cut too much in one pass.  So after really tightening the bit what do I do on the very next cut?  Make the classic mistake of running the board along the wrong side of the bit and send the board flying into the basement wall.   Guh.

Moving on.  I made the rest of the cuts for the joint without issue until I got to the 45 degree groove.  I was hoping I could use the very top of a chamfer bit to make the groove but the cutting edge doesn't go all the way to the top.  I gave it a shot anyway and I wound up with this burnt mess.  (The wood is stained, not totally burnt, the burn marks are only at the top.)

You can see the charred edge right at the very top

So I would definitely need a different bit (or bits) to make this joint.  I did have better luck with the lock miter, though, still not a total success.

Top piece with just the mitered edge left

Things were looking pretty good until I had to do the mitered edge, again using the chamfer bit.  What I didn't think about was that I needed to use only the very widest part of the bit otherwise it would cut into the tongues.  This made it a bit more difficult to get the correct depth.  I also had trouble trimming the tongues to fit into the grooves.  Here's the end result:

Lock miter - First Attempt

Not the neatest looking joint.  Obviously some of my cuts were a bit off.  It was challenging getting the right depth for the bit and the fence.  Something to work on I guess.

So in review:  Dado in plywood is a go.  Cabinet door joints need special bits.  Lock miter joint is doable but will take some practice or purchasing of a different specialty bit.

Testing Joints

It's been about three weeks since the last update.  Hurricane Irene left us with no power for four days and a basement with two inches of water.  It certainly put things on hold for a bit but it definitely could have been worse.  So today I'm finally getting back into it.  I'm going to be testing a few different joints I sketched up to see if it's doable or if I've bitten off more than I can chew.

In the last post I mentioned that I made a second version of the cabinet in Google SketchUp.  Here it is:

Cabinet Version 2

The concept is pretty much the same.  The big difference is that instead of modeling the cabinet as a whole, I modeled all of the individual pieces and then fit them together.  I also corrected the thickness of the boards to 3/4" instead of 1/2" so the whole thing looks a bit chunkier.

The first joint I will be testing is where the inner walls meet the top and bottom of the cabinet:

Dado joint

This is a pretty simple joint but I've never tried it on plywood before.  I'm hoping the dado will still come out smooth.

The next joint is on the cabinet doors.  After looking at a few cabinet doors here and there I decided to change the design a bit and add some character:

Cabinet door frame with beveled inner edge

I put a beveled edge around the inside edge and decided to try to make a tongue-and-groove joint for the frame.  Combining these two makes the joint a little complicated:

Cabinet view from top

They make router bits (usually in pairs) specifically for these types of joints but they are pricey.  So I'm going to try to make it in steps and see if I can get a fairly decent version before spending any money.

The last joint I'm going to try today is for the top corners of the cabinet.  I initially thought of using a miter joint so that it would hide the ends of the plywood:

Top corner miter joint

However, depending on how the well the door joints come out I might try something a little crazier:

Locking miter joint

This was an idea I had to combine the hidden edge of the miter joint with the locking benefit of the tongue-and-grove joint.  I was hoping to find some evidence of this joint being used so I didn't have to worry about things like the strength of the joint or the feasibility.  It wasn't until I stumbled onto the phrase "lock miter" that I found anything.  They, again, make specific bits that do something similar.  Then I found this.  So I was very happy to see that my thoughts were right on the money and it is indeed a strong joint.  I still have to try to make it though...

I imagine I'll be spending most of the day testing this out so hopefully I post some pictures tonight of the trials and results.

Routers are Amazing

Why did I never learn about routers in shop class?  We used about 10 different kind of saws but they didn't even talk about routers.  It is such a versatile tool and incredibly precise.  I've been using a circular saw to make various cuts but getting a precise cut continues to elude me.  I'm usually off by about 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch.  Trimming with a router on the other hand is much more consistent and exact.  You can also do some pretty cool things with it as long as you have the right bit, and there are an awful lot of bits.  The downside is they can get pretty expensive.

My dad, who has an extensive tool collection, let me borrow his router.  In fact he has let me borrow most of the tools used for this project.  It's really the only reason this project is cost effective.  So big thanks to dad.  Back to the router, since I had never used a router before I decided to read a book (also provided by Dad):

This book was really helpful for a beginner like me. It has a lot of useful information on the proper ways to use a router. The best part of the book I'd say was the projects.  Spielman includes several projects that get you familiar the different things you can do with a router.  The projects, when they're complete, are also really useful.  This included a bookcase, a workbench and a router table:

Simple bookcase

Workbench with detachable router table

Legs joined with mortise and tenon joints

So after reading through this book and using the router I went back to the design and worked in some of the joinery techniques to hopefully make a stronger, more professional looking cabinet.  I'll post some of the updates in the next entry.

Maple does not stain

I went to Home Depot to pick out the type of wood I wanted to use for the cabinet.  Maple caught my eye.  It was one of the few hard woods that I could get in both solid wood and plywood.  I also liked the grain, more subtle then oak.  I grabbed a 1x3 board to start testing out staining.

Plain Maple

The color we want is typically referred to as espresso, it's a very dark reddish-brown.  So I cruised over to the stain isle and picked out the darkest Minwax stain, and some pre-stain treatment.  Minwax doesn't make a stain in the exact color we were looking for but I figured this would be a good starting point.

After three coats of stain I realized this was not going to work.

An uneven, blotchy mess. not quite the look I was going for

Doing some research that I should have done in the beginning, I found out that maple does not stain well at all (no kidding) and in fact the way to make maple dark is to dye it.  I had never heard of wood dye and wouldn't have thought it was any different than stain if I had heard the phrase, but as it turns out, it's completely different.  A local wood working shop sells the TransTint brand.  It comes in a concentrated two ounce bottle that you dilute with water.  The starting concentration they recommend is 1 ounce dye to 1 quart water.  I bought a bottle of the Dark Walnut.  I ended up using a double concentration and got much better results than the stain.

I was still missing the red though so I ended up buying a bottle of the Red Mahogany as well and mixed in a signal concentration with it.  After apply two coats of polyurethane on top here's the results:

Much better. Hopefully the color comes out in the images, I was having a tough time getting a shot that was a good representation. The color is very close, I think it may actually be a tad too dark.  One thing I was noticing was the color was much richer when you're applying the dye then when it's dry.  So it would look great when it was wet but then had a sort of faded look after I let it dry. I kept making the dye darker to try to fix that which didn't really work.  Once I applied the polyurethane, however, that richness came back.

That's it for now.  Next post I think will be about the tools I'm using.

The Design

As I'm fairly good with computers and fairly poor with drawing I knew I wanted to find some sort of CAD software to work with in designing the TV stand.  Doing sketches on paper got old very quickly and didn't really give me any idea of space requirements.  So I did some searching for free CAD programs and the first thing I found was Google SketchUp.  Now I'm probably pretty late to the party on this one as it's already in version 8, but man is this an awesome program.  I watched all of the beginner tutorials and that pretty much gave me enough tools to start designing.  Here one that shows off a lot of the useful features for those who may be interested:

One of the greatest things about this application is the ability to share and import models and the library that's already available.  I was able to import to-scale models of almost all my electronics that will be housed in the stand which made it really easy to see exactly how they would fit.

Now on the Design itself:  I have fairly little experience working with wood so I wanted to keep the design simple and within what I thought would be my skill-level.  It's also a nice coincidence that Sarah (my wife) and I have a fairly modern style, we tend to prefer simple and clean to overly ornate and decorative.

Key Requirements of the Design:
1.  Must hold all electronics (360, PS3, Wii, Receiver, Cable box, and HTPC)
2.  Must have built in wire management including networking
3.  Shorter the better, aiming for only 18" high

So here's my first draft (I have since modified it but I will save that for another post)

Cabinet with Doors Off 

Cabinet with doors on

Looking at tons of other TV stands, I liked the look of the receiver in the center.  It also made sense from a wiring perspective as everything runs into the receiver and then out to the wall.  Game systems on the right, cable box and HTPC (not shown) on the left and a drawer in the middle to hold controllers, games, movies, etc.  Dimensions are 60" wide, 18" high and 20" deep.

Next entry will be about the color...